The level of industrial and oil pollution in the Caspian Sea has reached a "critical condition," an Iranian ecological expert warned, quoted by local media on Thursday.
The level of industrial and oil pollution in the
Caspian
Sea
has reached a "critical condition," an Iranian ecological
expert warned, quoted by local media on Thursday.
"In terms of pollution, the
Caspian Sea
is in
critical condition," Reza Pourgholam, head of the Caspian Sea Ecological
Research Institute, told
Fars
news
agency.
Exploitation of oil fields and traffic of large oil tankers dumps 122,350
metric tons of potentially cancerous oil pollutants into the world's largest
inland sea annually, Pourgholam said.
The sea is also poisoned by large quantities of heavy metal just as dangerous
as the hydrocarbons, he said, adding that "304 [metric] tons of cadmium
and 34 tons of lead pollute the sea every year."
Pourgholam claimed 95% of the pollution originates from the sea's littoral
states in the north and northwest--
Russia
,
Kazakhstan
and
Azerbaijan
, home
to a major offshore oil industry.
The Islamic republic is only responsible for 5% of the pollution, by dumping
agricultural waste such as fertilizer and pesticides as well as detergents into
the sea, Pourgholam said.
According to him, agricultural pollutants dumped into the sea in the Iranian
province
of
Mazandaran
,
situated in the southeast of the
Caspian Sea
, fell
from 10,000 tons to 4,000 annually over the past decade after
Iran
took
measures to lower its pollution of the sea.
The treatment of the
Caspian Sea
's environmental problems is
among the issues on which the bordering countries have yet to reach agreement.
Other issues still outstanding include the legal status of the sea and the
delimitation of territorial waters after the breakup of the
Soviet
Union
in 1991.
The issue has been delaying the signing of an international convention on the
Caspian
Sea
in preparation for years, to govern the cooperation of riparian states
in all fields.
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